Ishmael

I went to tennis clinic yesterday. I've been playing at playing tennis for almost a year now. I'm not a serious player, or a good one for that matter, by any stretch of the imagination. But I enjoy the exercise and I've met some neat women on the courts.

We did a drill where one player stayed on one side of the court, and hit the ball against two players on the other side. The entire group rotated through the side with two players, while the single player stayed put. So basically, it was one person against everyone else. Don't worry, everyone got to have a turn being the singleton. Including me.

Near the end of my solo performance, I joked, "You can just call me Ishmael today!"

Yeah...nobody else thought it was funny either.

You all know who Ishmael is don't you? He is the son that Abraham had with the handmaiden of his wife, Sarah. God promised to bless Abraham with more descendants than he could count. But Abraham's wife, Sarah, was barren. So when Sarah decided that God was not going to make good on His promise, she took matters into her own hands and offered her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham. It was the custom of the day that any children born from Abraham and Hagar would be considered Sarah's children.


Emotionally, I have always had a hard time with the plight of Hagar. We see glimpses of her personality in scripture that are not very flattering. For instance, when she becomes pregnant, she gets all haughty and despises her mistress, Sarah. Being 21st century Americans, we have a hard time with this whole master-servant relationship. It seems very clear to us that all people should be considered equal; we look down on the idea of servitude. But still, in Hagar and Sarah's time, Hagar was behaving very badly to scorn Sarah and exalt herself over her mistress.


Even taking that, and other, bad behaviors into account, I feel so much pity for Hagar. When I first did an in-depth study that included her story, I was nursing my son, and no doubt had a heightened emotional sensitivity to her situation. One part in particular, still jars my heart.

Genesis 21:14-16

"So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water; and putting it on her shoulder, he gave it and the boy to Hagar, and sent her away. Then she departed and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. And the water in the skin was used up, and she placed the boy under one of the shrubs. Then she went and sat down across from him at a distance of about a bowshot; for she said to herself, "Let me not see the death of the boy." So she sat opposite him, and lifted her voice and wept."

It still makes me teary-eyed to read that. Can you imagine wandering around in the desert, abandoned, cast out, despised and rejected, with your helpless child depending on you, and being unable to provide? Its almost more than I can think about. Picturing her putting her son under the shrub, so she won't see him die, but unable to leave him alone, so she just goes a little way off, tears my mother's heart in two.

(Hagar and Ishmael come out OK in the end. God speaks to Hagar, and shows her a well of water. Ishmael goes on to father a mighty nation.)

If you thought that the Old Testament was dusty and yawn-inducing, you should seriously reconsider. It's got more twists, turns and tragedies than Days of our Lives. The people that God chose, and revealed Himself to, were far from perfect. They were deeply flawed, and not only that, but Scripture highlights their weaknesses instead of covering them up. You can look at that as encouragement for you and me, because we are deeply flawed too. But ultimately, what it really does is point to our need for one who is perfect--Jesus. All of the men who came before Jesus had failings, even the mighty ones like Elijah and Moses.

I wonder why nobody laughed at my Ishmael joke. You know...the name Ishmael...it means "Yahweh has been attentive to your humiliation."

Oh, you didn't know that? I thought everybody knew that. Huh. No wonder my joke was such a flop. Almost as bad as my performance at tennis.